


Nocturne

by napoleonscomet



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: M/M, a series of non-linear vaguely connected drabbles from pierre's pov, absolutely gratuitous overaching metaphors and overdramatic poetics, dearest sweetest best of friends you know you are all these things to me, if u recognize the first scene it's because i posted it as a one-shot last year, tfw u love him in silence for approximately fourteen years to one degree or another??, truly a labor of love yall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 15:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18346154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napoleonscomet/pseuds/napoleonscomet
Summary: “Of course,” he then stammers instead. “But seeing you like this, Andrei, I - ” He stops short, on the cusp of saying something he’s not sure he wants to say, something that’s been on the tip of his tongue for years, its surety blossoming as its depth, its intensity, its nigh-autonomous impulse to come forth.Later, Pierre will have a hard time remembering when his childish, hero-worship crush morphed into the love that he’ll come to carry with him, that’ll come to cut deep and scar over; he’ll forget the first hint of a wound and come to think he gradually awoke into a constant, steadfast feeling. [...] The rest is a nocturne.





	Nocturne

**Author's Note:**

> i must absolutely stress that these scenes are not in order and i took out the year markers for the sake of deliberate ambiguity but if its confusing drop me a line and i'll put them back in!!

_ Whether I die first or survive you, I lose you _

-Sylvia Townsend Warner

 

“ _ I understand that  _ he ”  _ (Prince Andrei) “loved no one as he did him” _

_ -War and Peace  _ Volume IV, Part Four, XVIII

 

The firelight carves shadows in Andrei's face, chiseling deeper into the impermeable stone of his expression; emphasizing hollows that had not always been there, Pierre notices. That was always his friend’s style – in his despondency, he ceases to care for himself; he doesn't eat enough or sleep enough, he becomes ungentle. His jaw is clenched like his hands, perhaps unconsciously, as his mind spirals away from Pierre, but near to him. “My God,” he utters, suddenly. “What is the sense in this?” Pierre's gaze fixes on him, but silently. "The brutality. And for what honor? What dignity? My God. Could we not have stopped this? Could you?”  


“How could I," Pierre replies. "I may be a Mason, but I am just one man."  


“One man, one man," Andrei says, rising and beginning to pace. “My God, but we are all men. And some of us will die, and some of us will live, and what is the difference between another man and I? How does God favor the one who lives more than the one who dies? Oh, Pierre – how can I live like this? I can't." His expression darkens as he moves from the fire, his burning eyes the only light in his face. At least it won't be for long."

And without needing to be told, Pierre knows that tomorrow, his friend will march across the battlefield like a common soldier, will trade sparks and cannon fire alongside the infantry he now equates himself to. His luminary contrail spiraling earthward, despair wrenching his excellence from the sky -

The only thing he knows how to do: He takes his hand. "You're thinking of her."

"I told you - " Andrei squeezes his eyes shut, counting on the gathering darkness to hide it. "Not to _speak_ to me of that."

"Andrei," Pierre insists, dropping his hand but taking the step forward so that they are almost touching. Though out of the fire’s glow, they are close enough that Pierre can make out barely-glistening tears at the corners of his friend's eye. "I know how much you love her, I know how much it hurts – I know. By God, I _know_."

"You cannot," Andrei bites out, but Pierre persists.

"More than I can tell you, I know."

"You - " The realization dawns on his face like the crest of a wave.

"How could I not, Andrei?"  


"Why did you never say anything? You told me she loved me, you told me to marry her, why...How long?"

Pierre feels matching tears begin to form in his own eyes. "From the moment I met her as children," he confesses. "But Andrei, I could never speak a word to take away from her happiness. _E_ _ither_ of yours - "

The hand that touches Pierre's cheek is firm, but hesitant, a question burning whose answer is sought like a lifeline, a question having been asked for innumerable years, since two boys' eyes met across a Paris soiree, before the name N _apoleon_ had ever been heard in Russia, or Natasha Rostova had spoken her first word. A question as old as the world itself, or so it seems, as the world has been reduced just to _Andrei_ , _Andrei_ ; his despised tears and not-quite-shaking hands and tremulous breath that somehow now is close enough to be hot on Pierre's neck. A chill ghosts through Pierre and his hands clutch the other man's lapels, seemingly of their own accord. Pierre knows the silk of the epaulet tassels that brush against his knuckles and the rustle of the tent flap and they push their way through and nothing else but _Andrei_ _, Andrei, Andrei._

...

The soiree: It’s the very cusp of the year and his discomfort is so consuming it’s hard to believe it hasn’t turned the heads of everyone who’s met him. But no – it’s been a litany of distinguished guests, acquaintances of the man he’s not yet learned to call _father_ who have come up to him, kissed him, said something sweet that belied the question and answer they held simultaneously on the tips of their tongues. _I didn’t know your father had a son_ , they want to say, and the boy who doesn’t know what to call himself is half-tempted to speak it for them. _I didn’t know I had a father. I hardly knew I was a son_. He’s just thirteen and just brought into his father’s society from a mother – a mother he’s been told not to remember, and so he tries his best not to think of her. _Pierre_ , voices around him echo; _Petya_ his mother’s still rings in his ears. A foreign name and a voice he must learn to make foreign to him. For now, he stands in a room he’s never dreamed of in a country he’s hardly heard of. He’s a child still and still afraid.

The gilt doors open and  he sees his own unhappiness in the newcomers:  A starched, stern old man, older than his own father, followed by two dark, severe teenagers;  the girl closer his age and the boy older, her looking frightened and him aloof. A hand rests on his shoulder:  His father. “ My old friend Prince Bolkonsky,” his gruff voice too close to his ear.

“Count.”

“Prince. My son.” His father’s voice ever so slightly too tremulous on the word. The older boy studies the almost-son with interest. “Pierre.”

“You remember Andrei and Marya, don’t you?” the old prince asks. The old count nods an _of course_ and claps the boy – Andrei – on the shoulder.

“You look just like your father.” Andrei nods but his eyes are trained on Pierre.

After a brief but excruciating moment of conversation, Prince Bolkonsky shoos his unhappy daughter over to a cluster of young girls (“Maybe if you hide yourself amongst them someone may even ask you to dance!”) and takes Pierre’s father’s arm to lead him over to a nearer corner where a robust discussion of politics is beginning to take shape. Pierre is left alone with -

“Andrei Nikolaevich,” the older boy introduces himself, all disinterested courtesy.

“Pyotr Kirilovich,” Pierre responds, the word tasting strange on his unaccustomed tongue.

“I hadn’t known Count Bezukhov had a son,” Andrei observes, giving voice to the observation that had been the whole night hanging in the air like a miasma. Pierre shakes his head, unsure what explanation he ought – _can_ – give. And yet, though brusque, Andrei’s frankness is a breeze in a room long gone stale that clears away the sick cloud that hung over Pierre’s head.

He returns the frankness: “He wasn’t ever married – he said I’m not to be properly his son. Or talk about it in Russia until I’m older.”

“Hence France.” Pierre nods. “Still, you could do worse. It’s a beautiful city, _et_ _je pense qu'il faut apprendre la langue dans la pays où elle est parler_ _._ ”

“The language...”

“Yes, of course, you’ll have to - ” Andrei breaks off as Pierre flushes with the torrent of _newness_ of it all, and places a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. Steadying. Pierre leans into the touch, the first grounding thing he’s had since he left his mother’s house and came to France.

…

The boy is a Prussian student, an expatriate like himself, and their paths meet at a club in Paris one night when Pierre is sixteen. Since his father brought him abroad he’s scarcely left the city – his friends go home in the summer, but he doesn’t have a home to go to, not really; his father’s hardly remembered him and he’s not sure that his mother does. Privately, he’s afraid to see her: He’s changed, so much, become far more his father’s son than hers. Surely she must be different too – he’s afraid that in their divergence they won’t be able to find each other. Vaguely, he’s aware that her life has gone on in a way that leaves as little room for a bastard child as the count’s.

In Paris, Pierre loses himself in the throng of the city and glamour of its lights. It’s filled to bursting, it seems, with the young and lost and seeking; the city itself feels almost lost as well. It’s big enough to _contain_ him and his hunger, and at odd moments he is stricken by how little any of it _matters_ , his life here that’s bound by time and anonymity, and in this loss of significance he is weightless, buoyant; and because nothing matters he free to _make_ it matter, whatever he wants.

The boy’s eyes gleam through the darkness as he pours more wine into Pierre’s glass and Pierre sees his same hunger reflected back at him. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He blinks and they’re on the rooftop, the frigid autumn sky stretching wide above them, a purloined bottle of wine empty to the dregs braced against the boy’s leg, and they’re telling stories. Pierre feels his cheeks flush and he can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the wine, the animation with which he’s trying to make the boy _understand_ , or something else, something yawning off the edge of the rooftop or in the gap between them, something terrible in its power. The boy is watching him, rapt; his clear eyes flitting between Pierre’s gesturing hands, his gaze, his lips - 

Pierre’s trying to explain the freedom the absurdity brings, repeating himself and digressing and trying to make the boy _feel_ it as deeply as he does when, mid-sentence, the boy kisses him. The hunger abates. The chasm’s stopped up. The next morning Pierre writes to Andrei.

…

**** There’s a hairline crack in the ceiling plaster. Pierre’s never noticed it before – has never had the chance to, has never yet stared for quite so long into the darkness, long enough for his eyes to adjust to the extent they have and would need to find such a crack, for the ceiling is quite cavernous ( _ Why?  _ he asks himself) and the crack remarkably small.

_ I am the author _ , he thinks,  _ of my own unhappiness _ , before trying at length to convince himself that this isn’t true, that there is something great and mysterious that is beyond him which has set him up for this – and yes, much of his life has been placed into hands unready or unwilling to hold it, but that all slips away from him whenever he tries to grasp onto it. For weeks, it seems as if he’s just been making mistake after mistake – but really, how could he be making mistakes when everyone else is so joyous off of it -

For Pierre has never seen Andrei quite so vibrant as he was this evening, his cheeks flushed and his eyes sparkling from the cold but something else as well, a spark Pierre is all too familiar with. It’s a bit of Natasha’s light, that brilliance and exuberance he’s known since they were both were young, a torch which in her presence kindles something within even him, brings forth a quiet but self-sufficient glow that lights him up from the inside.

In this memory,  Andrei’s awash in the same light that Pierre knows so well, the first time he’s ever seen such radiance become his friend, and when he describes Natasha as a light he is so drawn to, Pierre wants to say - 

something, anything, but there is so much that he could say, and Andrei waiting, nearly frenetic, for Pierre’s response. Desperate for his blessing.  There’s nothing Pierre could bring himself to say – he knows the light so well and loves it so true and aches for any bearer of it, not least the one before him. “Go to her,” he says, simply. “Run to her. Don’t look back.”

...

**** The house is empty,  _ truly _ empty, for the first time in months, with even the staff down to a skeleton crew. The rest of the residents are gone, somewhere; Helene not in Petersburg for once but at her father’s Moscow house with the rest of her family, Pierre’s half-hearted excuses having been made for a pretense understood to be so by absolutely everyone involved, Pierre’s cousins and various hangers-on out somewhere Pierre neither was told nor cares to know of. For tonight, Pierre is just a man by himself in an extremely large house. Since coming back to Russia the however many months before, the house has been nothing but bustle, arrangements, courters of his favor who once had turned their noses up at him, jealous relations sulking about, ministers, advisers, a further entourage whose motive he’s still not quite been able to discern.

It’s quiet. Quiet like a tepid spring night on a Paris balcony or rooftop, quiet like his Prussian boy’s attentions. Quiet like they haven’t exchanged letters since their separation, quiet like a condition Pierre finds regrettable but can’t quite bring himself to remedy. Quiet, even more so like a winter night half-remembered, padding softly up to his mother to complain of cold, her embrace half-forgotten. Quiet like the news of her death, news of circumstance so unlike his father’s, quiet like forgetting. Quiet like remembering, quiet like the realization that Pierre is, after all, quite alone.

He’s in the middle of a ballroom scarcely used (why did he  _ need _ a ballroom?) counting steps and tiles for no reason at all when the silence is parted by a clacking footstep across the floor.

“A visitor,” a valet informs him.

  
“I’ll be there,” he mutters absentmindedly.

It’s Andrei. As he crosses the threshold into his parlor, he stops dead, a smile breaking out across his face.

“I’ve been thinking,” his friend says by way of greeting, irreproachably. “About what you said to me when last we were together.”

“Let’s go to my study,” Pierre suggests, taking his friend’s hand.

They settle in much the same as they did that day at Bald Hills, Andrei sitting casually across a couch, as at ease as Pierre’s ever seen him.  Somewhere along the line, Pierre’s study has become a sacred space to him – he rarely lets anyone inside it, never relaxes with someone else present, his own nerves so ill-concealed that no one ever presses the point in staying. The room is dusty, in fact, from how little his servants even come in to clean it.

Andrei’s the exception. Because his study is such a part of himself, it is too a place for him of honesty, of things even if unspoken to be expressed, shown, enacted. So Andrei sits loosely at one end of the couch, Pierre curled up at the other, his legs tucked under him. He watches his friend from the side, rapt.

“Nikolushka was sick with fever,” he begins, his brow furrowed. “Marya and I stayed with him for the whole time. You know I don’t spend much time with him – I’d never seen her and him together before. Her love for him, Pierre,” he says, inclining his head to look at him. “I realized that I’ve never seen that before, not truly. Not in my father, not in – myself. Until now. Since Lise died, I’ve been. Well, I realized that something had to change. And so I stayed with him myself, stayed up the night, and when his fever broke, I found myself embracing her from relief – from  _ joy _ . I’d forgotten what that felt like.”

“Yes,” Pierre replies. “You seem changed somehow.”

“I’ve changed before,” Andrei admits. “And then fallen back to where I started from. I know this, and I can’t help that, but I want –  I want it to stick.”

“It _will_ ,” Pierre implores, though there’s nothing behind it but hope, but his wanting to a depth that surprises him his friend to stay like _this_ , so light and free. And so he listens as Andrei tells him of the improvements he’s made for his serfs, of the room at his estate he’s set aside for his son – the boy doesn’t live with him, scarcely sees him, but Pierre’s heart still swells at the happiness he sees written onto his friend’s face.

“Thank you,” Andrei says, “for pushing me.” Pierre almost denies it, but he’s stopped by the perhaps selfish recognition of the role he has played in his friend’s happiness.

“Of course,” he then stammers instead. “But seeing you like this, Andrei, I - ” He stops short, on the cusp of saying something he’s not sure he wants to say, something that’s been on the tip  of his tongue for years, its surety blossoming as its depth, its intensity, its nigh-autonomous impulse to come forth.

Later, Pierre will have a hard time remembering when his childish, hero-worship crush morphed into the love that he’ll come to carry with him, that’ll come to cut deep and scar over; he’ll forget the first hint of a wound and come to think he gradually awoke into a constant, steadfast feeling. This is only partially true: For it is his friend’s excitement, his gratitude, his humbleness before him that casts aside the seven years of age between them that Andrei’s never seemed to notice and Pierre’s never been able to ignore, that have always made him feel like a child tagging along behind him, made him for once come to know Andrei as just as human as himself. It’s exultant, to succumb in a moment to something that’s lurked for so long. It’ll come to destruction; though quiet and unvoiced, it’s triumph.

...

The carriage bounces over the rocky ground as the forests give way to meadows, orchards, an assemblage of cottages sprawled along the wayside, and Pierre knows that Bald Hills must be just up ahead.

It’s summer, and change is blossoming in Pierre right alongside the verdant hills of the country he hasn’t seen in years. He hasn’t seen Andrei, either, in nearly as long, and so when the invitation came in a letter asking him to spend part of the summer at his friend’s estate, he began packing to leave France the next day. A small pond. An apple tree. The carriage stops, too soon, it feels, and a footman in an old-fashioned frock coat and powdered wig is helping him down. Pierre surveys the house before him: it’s _massive_ , the likes of which he’s scarcely seen before. It hits him, suddenly, how different his friend’s place is in society: For although he seems to have chosen to reject it, Pierre can scarcely fathom what it must be like to be born into the aristocracy rather than live life hovering over the edge of it, to have the stability that’s never belonged to Pierre. The house is old but its upkeep is excellent. There’s no one but the footmen in sight. His stomach twinges with apprehension.

The tall doors crack open and a figure appears – Andrei, he recognizes immediately. Then his friend nearly flies down the stairs to press his hand. Pierre’s recently grown several inches; his body’s not felt his own until Andrei looks up at him – up, for the first time, something ineffable in his expression. Their eyes meet for a moment so protracted it ought to have been uncomfortable, before his friend pulls him into an embrace, and when they pull apart, Andrei’s face is consumed by a smile.

Her name is Lise, Pierre learns, as he’s seated across from her at dinner that night. She seems ill-at-ease in the same way he is, laughing with Marya and shooting glances at Andrei as if she needs to know that he’s watching her, needs to prove that she can make herself into an interlocking part of his life. Pierre tries not to look at her too closely, but once, she looks at him in the same way she looks at Andrei, and from there, he can’t seem to stop himself following her through the conversation.

Later, they retire to Andrei’s study; Andrei draping himself across a couch and ringing for wine before bidding the servant who brings it depart. He gestures for Pierre to pull up a chair and Pierre finds that he can’t, can’t subject himself to the scrutiny inherent to his friend’s gaze. Can’t be somewhere where their eyes could meet so easily, can’t sit still when the room is full of shadows kept at bay by candlelight and his friend is so near and so aloof and so alone with him.

He stands by the curtained window, pretends to admire the estate largely hidden by the gathering dusk. “You’re going to marry her?”

“I mean to,” Andrei replies, his voice soft. “And what about you? Is there anyone?”

“No,” Pierre replies quickly, wondering if his letters had suggested anything of the sort. “No, I’m not sure that life is for me.”

“There’s still plenty of time for you,” says Andrei, pouring the wine into glasses. “I’m glad I met Lise when I did and not before. I couldn’t have – not at your age, that is.”

“I’m not sure anyone would have me,” Pierre admits. “I’m a bit short on the things that women want – money, a name...”

“You have to be practical,” Andrei supplies. “But it’s not as if – someone would have you, I’m sure of it.”

“Me?” He laughs as his friend finishes pouring and raises a glass as a form of beckon. “Andrei, I’m – my father’s scarcely acknowledged my existence since he first recognized me. Every one knows I’m a - ”

Andrei’s response is indescribably cold in a way that Pierre is familiar with and knows he doesn’t quite mean and yet has never felt directed at him. It’s harder to believe it when his friend is spitting out the word he can’t quite say himself: “A bastard.” He nods, brusquely, trying not to let it show that everything feels more _everything_ when Andrei is the one who says it. He whispers his friend’s name and wonders why he was ever allowed to call him that.

Andrei notices, his face flushing. “I’m sorry, I - ” he stutters, half-rising, setting down his own glass. “Forgive me.” Pierre nods again and turns back towards the window. A hand on his shoulder signals the beginning of the movement that follows an overture that neither of them quite caught.

The rest is a nocturne. The rest is whispers soaring above chamber music, the brush of gloved hands, a letter asking why he hasn’t called. It’s a dance they perform; spinning, spiraling, crashing into each other like waves on the shore in the moonlight. It’s Penelope’s web, woven before dawn to be unraveled when the sun’s rays crown the Ithacan hillsides, make the sky flush like skin upon skin. It’s a symphony that only they can hear—and Pierre begins to wonder if it’s only him that’s listening at all. The sun rises above the skyline of Paris where he sits one morning a month or so later, legs crossed awkwardly in an attempt at grace. A letter is delivered to him and everything is wrong—for this story can’t be told after daybreak, not in the self-sufficient light of the sun. It’s a pale, lunar reflection, some quiet imitation of what it could be were it just to be _named_. The bridge could hardly bear him up, and he wonders if he should try to cross. He could reach the other side, or he could fall into depths unimaginable. He’s always been scared of the dark, just a little. But the dark is the only place the story can unfold.

…

_ Andrei,  _ Pierre whispers into the darkness.  An answering breath puffs against his ear. He twists around until the contours of the other man’s face are just in view – without his glasses, it’s hard to discern. He searches with his free hand, finds them and puts them on. His eyes are just about level with his friend’s proud jawline. Pierre wants to trace it, memorize its shape while he still has time, but he knows that what Andrei needs more than anything else is sleep. So he resists, takes it in with his eyes instead, eyes which begin to burn as he can hardly force himself to blink for the time it’ll take away, time that they don’t have. His heartbeat sounds a tattoo in his ears: He counts the beats, tries not to think of it like every beat he gains Andrei loses. Tomorrow. Pierre has stumbled into and out of more hopeless situations than he can count, has walked away unscathed and stumbling by his luck, or fate, or whatever it is – nothing more.

Andrei has never had that kind of luck. Pierre’s need to touch gets the best of him and his fingers find the scar that still feels fresh seven years later, whose opening once just about ended Andrei. He thinks of Natasha, of watching the only two people he’s ever loved, who ever have loved  _ him _ , tearing each other apart in front of him. He remembers weeping out the words he couldn’t say, remembers comforting each of them in turn and going home after night fell, storming past the wife he couldn’t  look at , collapsing on his too-large bed  alone and crying his heart out, tears that he never admitted to have fallen.  How he wrapped his own arms around himself and never said anything, just tried to piece back together the two hearts that made up his own.

And now, when it is far too late, when things have been acknowledged between two people so fated to die that it is like they are dead already, when two ghosts have just once looked at their love in the light of the sun, his lips find the edge of that reminder of his lover’s fallibility. He doesn’t move for several moments, his face pressed into the crook of Andrei’s neck, breathing him in as quietly as he dares until he has to press his eyes closed against the tears that threaten to overcome him again, pressing his forehead into the other man’s shoulder. Thinks his name like a mantra.

Pierre hadn’t realized he was awake still, too, until he shifts, turning so that they’re lying facing each other. He reaches out to touch Andrei’s cheek but he doesn’t respond so Pierre pulls his hand away. Not an inch of their bodies  is in contact; the distance is even more overwhelming than the closeness:  _ Please _ , Pierre wants to say.  _ Touch me, even slightly. Take my  _ hand  _ at least, give me yours _ . But Andrei’s drawn back into himself, the touch they shared already fading into memory as the sun begins to break, the only indication of it the gathering lightness that creeps through the cracks of the makeshift building. As the brightness grows, their eyes meet, lock fast. Andrei blinks just slightly too quickly, the only indication that the night meant anything to him at all. As the noise of the army waking around them begins to grow, they dress in silence. Pierre feels Andrei’s eyes on him but once their gaze is broken, Andrei won’t let it meet again.


End file.
